What a transit is
Your birth chart is fixed: the Sun, Moon and planets stay where they were at the minute you were born. The planets in the sky keep moving. A transit is the moment a moving planet makes one of the classic angles to a point in that fixed chart: the same degree (a conjunction), 60° (sextile), 90° (square), 120° (trine) or 180° (opposition). "Transiting Saturn square your natal Sun" means Saturn today is 90° from where the Sun was when you were born.
A transit also has a house. If you know your birth time, each planet in today's sky falls into one of the twelve houses of your chart, and astrologers read that house as the area of life the planet is passing through. The table in the calculator shows both: the aspects and the houses.
How to read your transits
- Start with the slow planets. Look at Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto in the 12-month list. Each line is a theme with a date. Saturn is read as effort and limits, Jupiter as growth, Uranus as sudden change, Neptune as blur and ideals, Pluto as pressure and deep change.
- Check what they touch. A transit to your Sun, Moon, ascendant or midheaven is read as more personal than one to Jupiter or Saturn in your chart. Our birth chart calculator explains each of your natal points.
- Read the angle. Conjunctions start something, trines and sextiles are read as easy openings, squares as pressure to act, oppositions as other people or circumstances pushing back.
- Then the fast planets. The Sun, Mercury, Venus and Mars in the "within orb" list are the details of the current week: a good day for talks, a short spell of friction, a social week.
Slow planets and fast planets
Speed decides how much a transit is worth. The Moon goes around your whole chart in about four weeks and stays within orb of a point for only a few hours, so the calculator leaves it out. The Sun, Mercury, Venus and Mars take days to pass a point. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto move so slowly that one transit can last months, and they are the ones astrologers read as the big themes of a year. That is the usual method, too: look at the slow planets first, then use the fast ones for timing inside them.
Even slow planets reach a chart fairly often. In our count, one point of a chart received an exact aspect from Jupiter about 1.1 times a year on average, from Saturn 0.6 times, and from Uranus, Neptune and Pluto between 0.16 and 0.27 times. For a whole chart of ten planets that adds up: over a random 12 months a chart had a median of 22 exact slow-planet transits, and eight charts in ten had between 16 and 29.
| Exact aspects to one point in a calendar year | Share of point-years |
|---|---|
| 0 | 12.1% |
| 1 | 28.1% |
| 2 | 19.9% |
| 3 | 19.6% |
| 4 | 10.3% |
| 5 or more | 9.9% |
Every degree of the zodiac, every year from 1930 to 2025 (34,560 point-years), all five aspects from Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, each retrograde pass counted separately. The whole-chart figures are from 4,957 birth dates, each over a random 12 months of their life.
Why one transit can happen three times
Seen from Earth, every planet except the Sun and Moon goes retrograde from time to time, and Jupiter to Pluto do it for months at a time, about once a year, so a slow planet can cross the same point forward, then backward, then forward again. The calculator lists each crossing as its own date and marks it "pass 1 of 3", "pass 2 of 3" and so on. Astrologers read the three passes as one story: the theme shows up at the first, comes to a head at the second, and settles at the third.
Between the passes the planet is still within a degree or two of the point for weeks, which is why a slow transit is usually described as a season, not a day. The exact dates are the peaks.
Saturn return: the transit everyone knows
The best-known transit is Saturn returning to the degree it held when you were born. Saturn takes about 29.5 years to go around the zodiac, so the first return falls at 28 to 30. In our count of every birth date from 1930 to 2025 the first exact touch came between age 28.4 and 29.9, and 38% of those dates get three touches because of retrograde loops. Astrologers read it as the transit of adult responsibility: work, commitments and the life structure you chose in your twenties get tested.
The calculator above shows it when it is within the next 12 months, with its passes. For every date of your first and second return, use the Saturn return calculator. Jupiter has a return too, roughly every 12 years (its orbit takes 11.86 years), at about 12, 24, 36 and 47, which the tradition reads as a fresh start in growth and luck.
Orbs and timing we use
An orb is how close to exact a transit must be to count. We use 2° for Jupiter to Pluto and 1° for the Sun, Mercury, Venus and Mars, because the fast planets pass a point in a day or two and a wide orb would list most of them every day. Each line says whether the transit is applying (getting closer to exact) or separating; astrologers usually weigh an applying transit more.
Exact dates are found by narrowing the moment down to the minute and are shown in the time zone of your device. Positions come from the same ephemeris as our current planets page and our 2027 horoscopes, whose planet sign changes we checked against Cafe Astrology and Astro-Seek: they matched to within a minute.
Mercury retrograde is read for everyone at once rather than chart by chart; its dates and phases are on the Mercury retrograde page.
Transits without a birth time
You still get almost everything. The positions of your natal Sun and planets from Mercury to Pluto barely depend on the hour, so their transits and exact dates are the same. What needs the time: your ascendant and midheaven, the houses that today's planets fall in, and an exact natal Moon. Without a time we place the natal Moon at local noon and mark its transits as approximate.
Questions about transits
What is a transit chart?
A chart that places the planets of a chosen day around your birth chart, so you can see which moving planets make aspects to your natal planets and which of your houses they are passing through. Astrologers use it to describe the themes of a period.
How do I see my current transits?
Enter your birth date, time and place in the calculator at the top of this page. Today's date is already filled in, so the result lists the transits within orb right now and the exact slow-planet transits for the next 12 months.
Which transits are the most important?
Astrologers rank transits from the slow planets highest: Pluto, Neptune, Uranus, Saturn and Jupiter, especially when they reach your Sun, Moon, ascendant or midheaven. The best-known single transit is the Saturn return at 28 to 30.
How long does a transit last?
It depends on the planet. A Mars transit lasts a few days, a Jupiter transit a few weeks, and a Saturn, Uranus, Neptune or Pluto transit can stay within orb for months, with up to three exact dates when retrograde motion brings the planet back.
How often do slow planets aspect my chart?
More often than people expect. Over a random 12 months, half of the charts in our count received 22 or more exact aspects from Jupiter to Pluto, counting all ten natal planets, and eight in ten got between 16 and 29. The fewest we saw was 4.
What is the difference between a transit and a progression?
Transits use the real positions of the planets on a given day. Secondary progressions use a symbolic clock where one day after birth stands for one year of life. This calculator shows transits only.
Are transits predictions?
Not on this site. Astrology is a symbolic tradition, and a transit is a theme astrologers read for a period, not an event that will happen. We show the calculation and what the tradition says about it.
Sources
- Astronomy Engine: the open-source ephemeris library behind our planet positions, dates and statistics
- Jean Meeus, Astronomical Algorithms (Willmann-Bell, 1991): formulas for the ascendant, midheaven, mean node and mean Lilith
- GeoNames: city coordinates for the calculator (CC BY 4.0)
- How we create our readings: our own calculation of sign dates, positions and the 1930 to 2025 statistics
Astrology is a symbolic tradition, not a science, and nothing here predicts events. We explain what the tradition says and show the calculation. Positions come from the astronomy-engine ephemeris in the tropical zodiac; time zones from the IANA database. More in How we work.